Monday 22 February 2016

Movie Review: Her (2013)


“her” is marketed as a romantic science fiction comedy drama

 “Theodore is a lonely man in the final stages of his divorce. When he's not working as a letter writer, his down time is spent playing video games and occasionally hanging out with friends. He decides to purchase the new OS1, which is advertised as the world's first artificially intelligent operating system, "It's not just an operating system, it's a consciousness," the ad states. Theodore quickly finds himself drawn in with Samantha, the voice behind his OS1. As they start spending time together they grow closer and closer and eventually find themselves in love. Having fallen in love with his OS, Theodore finds himself dealing with feelings of both great joy and doubt. As an OS, Samantha has powerful intelligence that she uses to help Theodore in ways others hadn't, but how does she help him deal with his inner conflict of being in love with an OS?”
- IMDB


The film is written, directed and produced by Spike Jonze, most well known for directing the 2009 Where the Wild Things Are adaptation. The film primarily stars Joaquin Phoenix as the lead and Scarlett Johansson as the voice of Samantha, the artificial intelligent OS. The film seems to be set in a not so distant future with technologies that we currently already have or very close to having. I appreciated that they didn’t choose to use tech that seemed too far-fetched because it seems like this is a trend that is getting worse.

Everything from the set design to the character clothing appeared to be very well thought out. The film had a very notable colour scheme of pastel colours that contrasted with the different shades of orange that was used throughout the film. The location used for filming amalgamation of Los Angelo’s and Shanghai, again gave a very real attempt to transport the viewer into the directors’ vision of the future.


Joaquin Phoenix portrayed the character perfectly well. The audience was able to feel both sympathetic while acknowledging his self-destructive ways. Personally the stand out performance in the film to my surprise was from Scarlett Johansson who played the voice of Samantha. Her performance completely sold this idea of artificial intelligence and how one can fall in love with something that doesn’t exactly exist.

Another wonderful film to watch.


4/5 Stars


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